NYC Affordable Housing Lottery Process Proctects Vulnerable New Yorkers

According to Curbed NY, NYC’s HPD announced changes to the affordable housing lottery process. The changes aim to make the lottery process easier for vulnerable New Yorkers, effective July 1st. While HPD currently has many lotteries, applicants often have difficult experiences with the application process.

The purpose of the changes is to reduce paperwork for applicants, make eligibility guidelines easier to understand, reduce the impact past financial history on an application, and offer more protections for domestic abuse survivors. Therefore, the lottery process should become more efficient.

Specifically, the new guidelines do not allow factors such as bad credit or inability to pay back debts to have negative affects on domestic abuse survivors.

Another change will help freelancers. This change eliminates the mandatory employment requirement for self-employment and freelancers.

The changes are part of the HPD marketing handbook, a tool developers use to create affordable housing units. In addition, the handbook is also useful for lottery applicants who wish to have a better understanding of the process.